While reading Hermann Hesse’s “The Living Word” (from Seasons of the Soul), I was struck by a quiet and enduring truth: that the Word—however sacred, however beautiful—is never meant to be held at a distance. It must be lived, or it loses its life within us.
His poem does not argue this, it simply reminds. And in that reminder, something in me answered—What happens when truth is no longer contemplated, but encountered, when it is no longer spoken, but beheld?
I found myself returning to a poem I had written some time ago, and I now read it differently:
When Truth and I Behold Each Other
When Truth and I behold each other,
my heart pulsates to the tempo of the soft-
spoken mist of rain that tiptoes
after the last bellow of the drunken
thunder has been silenced —
I forget this leavened flesh,
I am no longer
a tree walking
in my tannin espadrilles,
the alabaster egrets carry
my gesturing branches
across the turquoise oceans —
I am left with my eyes
sown in the meadow of the galaxies,
primordial light-years turn transparent
corneal sheaths
into the sun’s corona —
the brilliance is beyond diamonds.
— D. G. Vachal
Perhaps this is one way of receiving the “living word” — not as something we hold, but as something that overtakes us, reshapes us, and carries us beyond ourselves.
lilies, sparrows and grass 
Powerful thoughts and compelling prose, Dee ✨I like thinking of the “meadow of galaxies”…wow!!
Thank you so much, Susan! The “meadow of galaxies” came to me as a way of expressing that sense of being carried beyond the familiar self. I’m grateful it resonated with you.